Authors: Colin Woodard
The other camp was infuriated by this action. They were the die-hard outlaws, bitter, angry men who saw themselves not as businessmen or thieves, but as rebels or guerilla insurgents in a war against ship owners, merchants, and, in many cases, King George himself. This anti-pardon crowd included many of the pirates who held pro-Stuart or "Jacobite" sympathies and had been disappointed by the collapse of the 1715 uprising against King George and the House of Hanover. This faction included Paulsgrave Williams, the ruthless sloop captains Christopher Winter and Nicholas Brown, and several ambitious young men whose names would soon become infamous: Edward England, Edmund Condent, and "Calico Jack" Rackham. Their undisputed leader was Charles Vane.
Up until now, Vane had been in the background, one of the hundreds of low-ranking pirates who caroused in the streets of Nassau, drinking, gambling, fighting, and womanizing. He had been living off his earnings while serving with Henry Jennings, particularly his shares of the plunder stolen from the Spanish wrecks in 1716. He may have gone on short cruises with other pirate captains, but it seems that he spent most of the intervening year and a half as Jennings had: resting on his laurels ashore and appreciating the freedoms offered by the existence of the Bahamian pirate republic. The news of the pardon threatened to put an end to the pirate's nest, as did rumors that King George had appointed a new royal governor for the Bahamas. Vane, who had Jacobite sympathies, could not have been pleased when he read King George's proclamation. He was furious when he saw his less-committed colleagues celebrating atop the fort beneath the newly raised British flag.
Vane's faction rallied to the main square, which soon filled with hundreds of armed and angry men. They rushed the walls of the adjacent fort, evicted the revelers within, and pulled the Union Jack down from the flagpole. In its place they hoisted a flag that left no ambiguity about their allegiance: "the Black Flag with the Death's Head in it."
Vane's faction tried to attract outside support as well. Through their network of smugglers and Jacobite contacts in England, these pirates passed a message to Captain George Cammocke, a Royal Navy captain who had defected to the Pretender's cause and was now living in France. In the message, the pirates "did with one heart and voice proclaim James III for their King" and were "resolved to prosper or perish in their bold undertaking" against George I. As Cammocke would later tell it, the pirates wrote that "they have rejected with contempt the said pardon"; they "humbly desired" that the Stuarts would "send to them such a person as has borne some character in the Royal Navy of England" to serve as the Jacobite "Captain General of America, by Sea and Land," with the power to commission the pirates as privateers and to help organize their resistance to the Hanoverian King. With such guidance, they said they could mount a successful surprise attack on Bermuda and secure the colony for the Stuarts.
This extraordinary proposal reached Cammocke via supporters in England in just three months. The veteran naval officer enthusiastically embraced the pirates' plan and immediately volunteered to go to Nassau himself. In a letter sent on March 28, 1718, to James Stuart's mother, the deposed Queen Mary of Modena, Cammocke proposed to purchase a fifty-gun warship in Cádiz for £15,000, crew her with English Jacobites, and sail to the Bahamas as a Stuart admiral. Once in Nassau, Cammocke would, with James Ill's permission, issue a pardon for all the pirates, commissioning them as privateers instead. He would set up scheduled mail-boat service between Nassau and Spain so that the exiled Stuart court could be kept in close communication with the pirates. "Employing them against the common enemy will be the only means to make way for a Restoration" of the House of Stuart, Cammocke wrote. "For if we can destroy the West India and Guinea trade, we shall make the English merchants ... rather desire a Restoration then [to allow] that [the reign of George,] the Duke of Brunswick should continue." Events in the Bahamas, however, would overtake Cammocke's plan before it ever got off the ground.
The situation in Nassau remained tense throughout January 1718. Several pirate vessels returned with a number of well-laden prizes that served as a reminder of the benefits of piracy. These included the
Mary Galley
of Bristol, her holds packed with bottled liquor, and three large French ships carrying brandy, white wine, and claret. Hornigold brought in two well-armed Dutch merchant ships taken off Vera Cruz, Mexico; one had twenty-six guns, enough to reinforce Fort Nassau, while the other, the
Younge Abraham
of Flushing, Netherlands, had forty, as well as a large parcel of poorly cured animal hides whose influence would soon gravely effect life on Nassau.
The pirates held a general council to resolve their differences but, in the words of
A General History of the Pyrates,
"there was so much noise and clamour that nothing could be agreed on." Vane's camp argued that they should fortify the island, forcing King George to negotiate while they awaited word from James Stuart's court-in-exile. Jennings, on the other hand, insisted that they should take the pardon and surrender "without more ado," turning the island over to the royal governor whenever he showed up. The divisions "so disconcerted" the assembled pirates "that their Congress broke up very abruptly without doing anything."
After that, almost everyone on New Providence seemed to be packing up. The diehards began fitting out the ships and sloops in the harbor, preparing for what could be long and arduous cruises. Christopher Winter and Nicholas Brown were sailing to Cuba to shelter themselves among the Spaniards. Edmund Condent and ninety-seven other men signed aboard the sloop
Dragon,
which they fit out for a cruise to Africa and Brazil. Vane and sixteen followers acquired control of the sloop
Lark
and hid her in a secluded anchorage nearby where they modified her for pirate service. Meanwhile, other residents were sailing to take the pardon in neighboring British colonies. Jennings and fifteen of his men went to Bermuda in the
Barsheba
and received pardons from Governor Bennett. Others booked passage on merchant sloops bound for South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Jamaica. Hornigold stayed in Nassau, but sent a sloop to Jamaica with eighty of his men; he must have feared for his safety among the antipardon pirates, because he instructed the departing men to ask naval authorities in Port Royal to send a warship to Nassau for "protection."
By then, a Royal Navy frigate was in fact on its way, but from New York rather than Jamaica.
***
Captain Vincent Pearse, commander of the sixth-rate HMS
Phoenix,
received word of the proclamation on Christmas Day, during a heavy snowstorm that had slowed the postal riders from Boston. While the captains of other naval vessels took in the news of the proclamation passively, carrying on with business as usual, Pearse was young, ambitious, and ready to take the news directly to the pirates. He received the blessing of New York's governor and immediately began readying his ship, which was hunkered down for the winter, rolling guns back into place, securing supplies, and remounting topmasts and other rigging.
Pearse knew his frigate would need every advantage if the pirates proved hostile. The
Phoenix
was one of Britain's smallest frigates. At 273 tons and ninety-three feet in length, she was no bigger than a large pirate ship like the
Whydah
or
Queen Anne's Revenge,
and she carried less firepower. During the previous year, the Admiralty had removed the four quarterdeck guns she had carried in wartime, leaving the frigate with only twenty six-pound cannon. She was also vulnerable to boarding, having a peacetime complement of only ninety men. Nor was she particularly well built. As her name suggests, the
Phoenix
was originally built as a fireship, intended to be filled with combustibles, set on fire, and sailed into an enemy's battle fleet, her crew planning to get away at the last moment in an escape boat. As he set sail for Nassau on the afternoon of February 5, Captain Pearse must have hoped he wasn't getting in over his head.
On the morning of February 23, the
Phoenix
arrived at the main entrance to Nassau harbor, her men glancing nervously at the guns of the decaying fort and the death's head flag flying from its mast. Anchored in the harbor were fourteen vessels flying the colors of many nations: Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and the black or red flags favored by the pirates. Five were large ships, including the well-armed Dutch prizes brought in by Hornigold, as well as the
Mary Galley,
the unarmed French wine ship, and a small English merchantman. The other nine, Pearse later wrote in his log, "were traders with these pyrates, but pretended they never did it till [after] the Act of Grace was published."
Pearse ordered his lieutenant, Mr. Symonds, to assemble a landing party to take copies of the proclamation ashore. As the
Phoenix
's long boat slowly made its way into the harbor, Symonds holding aloft a white flag of truce, the pirates had a moment of reckoning. They could easily drive off the
Phoenix;
in addition to the guns in the fort, pirates were already onboard the thirty-six-gun
Younge Abraham
and the other twenty-six-gun Dutch ship. If they did so, there would be considerable loss of life, and none of the survivors would have any chance of obtaining a pardon. Hornigold, the most experienced and influential pirate on the island at the time, counseled a conciliatory approach. Those who wished to take the pardon and return to civilized society could do so; those who did not could still take the pardon, using it to their advantage to buy themselves more time. The rank-and-file agreed. When Symonds stepped onto the beach, proclamation in hand "he was received by a great number of Pirates with much Civility," Pearse's logbook attests. The lieutenant read the now-familiar proclamation aloud to the pirates, who greeted it with what he took to be "a great deal of joy."
Symonds was ashore for a few hours, during which time he was briefed by members of the pro-pardon faction. They wished to rid themselves of the inflammatory Charles Vane more than anyone else in the antipardon camp, and told the lieutenant how to find his secret anchorage. The pro-pardon pirates must have taken pleasure in watching the
Phoenix
sail out of the harbor in pursuit of their nemesis;Vane's allies watched with trepidation.
Pearse found Vane's sloop tucked in behind a little islet called Buskes Cay, just where his informants said it would be. He placed the
Phoenix
so that it blocked the entrance to the anchorage, then gave the order to commence firing on her.
Aboard the
Lark,
Vane's company had little choice but to surrender. As six-pound cannonballs splashed around their little vessel, the sixteen men concocted a cover story. They would tell the
Phoenix
's commander that they had been preparing not to go pirating, but rather to sail to Nassau to see him and learn about the king's pardon. With this in mind, Vane and his new quartermaster, a fearless Irishman named Edward England, sailed to the
Phoenix
and surrendered.
Pearse was not fooled by Vane's story and seized the
Lark
in the name of King George, taking Vane and company into custody. Although the sun was setting, Pearse felt confident they could find their way back to Nassau, so the
Phoenix
sailed through the night, arriving in the morning. He dropped anchor in thirty feet of water, the
Lark
anchoring nearby. Following the protocol of the day, the pirates aboard the two Dutch ships fired their guns in salute of His Majesty's ship, a sign that they recognized its authority.
Shortly thereafter, a number of boats rowed out from town, carrying what Pearse described as "their commanders and ringleaders": Hornigold, Francis Lesley, Josiah Burgess, and Thomas Nichols. Pearse recalled their conversation in his logbook later that day. They "informed me that my taking the sloop had very much alarm[ed] all, the Pyrats in general believing that [Vane and the other] men taken in her would be executed." The pirate commanders assured Pearse that if he set Vane's company free, it "would be a very great means to induce [the inhabitants of Nassau] to surrender and accept the Act of Grace." Pearse, mindful of his tenuous position, took the pirate commanders' advice and had Vane, England, and the other fourteen men released, assuring them "of his Majesty's goodness towards them." He kept the
Lark,
however, assigning some of his men to fit her out as a trading vessel. Pearse informed the pirate commanders that Woodes Rogers, the famous circumnavigator who had captured a Manila galleon during the war, had been appointed governor of the Bahamas and was expected in Nassau that summer. He added that he was willing to give each man who wished to accept the king's pardon a signed certificate that would afford them some degree of protection until Rogers arrived, or while the pirates were in transit to other colonies to get pardons from their governors. Hornigold, Vane, and the other pirate commanders rowed ashore, promising to do their best to convince those ashore to take the pardon.
After the pirates left, it started to rain and continued throughout the following day. Pearse waited in his steamy cabin for word from shore. On the second morning, February 26, 1718, a stream of boats began rowing through the rain, each filled with pirates who wished to surrender. Pearse received them throughout the next two days, acknowledging their capitulations, signing their certificates of protection, and adding their names to a growing list of soon-to-be-pardoned pirates. The first boatloads included Hornigold, Williams, Burgess, Lesley, and Nichols, as well as Bellamy's old quartermaster, Richard Noland, and Hornigold's quartermaster, John Martin. Pearse's list grew from fifty names to a hundred, and eventually to 209, a veritable
Who's Who
of Golden Age Pirates. It soon included most of Hornigold's original partners back in his periagua days—Thomas Terrill, John Cockram, and Daniel Stillwell; Henry Jennings's fellow privateer Leigh Ashworth; and several men whose pirate careers were far from over, including Samuel Moody and Charles Vane. At the end of his first week in the Bahamas, Pearse felt he had gained the upper hand. Instead of the several thousand pirates he had expected to find upon his arrival, there had been only 500 "young resolute fellows," in Pearse's words, "a paridor of unthinking people."